Archived News:

Saturday, Oct 20, 2012

An interview on GamesIndustry International talks with Chris Avellone of Obsidian Entertainment about their recent Kickstarter for Project Eternity, and how they managed to attract a record-setting four-plus million dollars in funding. As noted by VG247, this conversation includes indications they hope this role-playing game will become a multimedia franchise:

Our hope with Eternity is that it's just the first in a series of installments, and then obviously we want to do the full expansion packs, and then extra content, just because we know we really enjoyed doing that for Fallout: New Vegas. We'd want to continue adding new content to the world. The first game is only one moderately sized nation in a much, much, much bigger world where a lot of other things are going on. There's plenty more room for games in that universe and that's what we'd like to do.

It's kind of nice because not all of that has to be done in the games; we can go out and look for graphic novel tie-ins and novel tie-ins and stuff. It is kind of cool to be able to pursue that on our own without having to go through a publisher, or accept the fact that whatever franchise we're with already has the avenues all covered. It's such a nice feeling.

Ken Rolston is the new head of design at Turbine Games, reports Develop, after the long-time lead designer on Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series was left out of a job when the demise of 38 Studios dragged Big Huge Games under. It's not explicitly stated what Ken will be working on at the Lord of the Rings Online developer, other than word that: "He will be responsible for all aspects of game design from vision to implementation."

Mordor HQ has a quote from DICE senior programmer Mikael Kalms saying the next client patch for Battlefield 3 will include an option to turn off color grading in the military shooter sequel (thanks LittleMe). Here's word:

There will be a console command for disabling the color grading entirely in the game included with the next PC game client update. We believe that turning it off gives no major competitive advantage/disadvantage.

IRNV scope and a few others which turn the image into greyscale or greenscale don't work properly without color grading and will look real ugly.

There will be no in-game UI for turning it on/off.

We are unlikely to handle support questions and bug reports regarding stuff that happens when color grading is disabled.

We have some pretty nice weather going on in these parts, so I may try to take advantage and do a little outdoor cooking. Either way, we definitely need to manage to go out and enjoy this while it lasts, as November is looming on the calendar.